Sympathy for the Devil

by Howard Marks

  ‘No negatives here,’ he said. ‘Looks like these shots were developed digitally.’

  ‘That would confirm what Rhys said to you, that the pictures came to him from a source. Rhys didn’t take them himself.’

  Huw was still peering closely at the contact sheets. ‘They’ve been printed from a memory stick, probably. The originals would still be stored on the source’s camera or on his computer.’

  She looked hard at Huw. ‘The source can’t have been willing to send the images online. Otherwise why would Rhys have come all the way out here? He must have insisted on giving them to Rhys in person.’

  ‘Unless Rhys met the source once he was out here?’

  ‘I don’t think so. To give Rhys the images digitally would require a significant level of trust. That sort of trust wouldn’t have been built up in a couple of weeks. The source was more likely someone already known to Rhys.’

  Huw sat beside her, nodding slowly. ‘So then someone suspects Rhys has the images, and that leads to his cottage being turned over. And then they follow him back to Cardiff.’

  ‘Rhys wouldn’t have been able to go for more than a day without scoring,’ Catrin said. ‘So if the date the dealer said he last saw him is right, from here Rhys headed straight to Cardiff.’

  ‘Back to home territory where he thought it would be easier to lose a tail?’

  ‘Possibly. Della said they were being watched when she met him that last night, so by then whoever it was had probably caught up with him.’

  Huw had picked up the canvas bag and now ran his fingers along the insides. ‘There’s something else in here,’ he said. From a side pocket he lifted out a disc and loaded it in the laptop. There was only a single file. It was marked by the blue icon for a video package. He began to run the film.

  Catrin couldn’t see much at first, just some flickering, pale unfocused shapes among a confusion of shadows.

  ‘What the fuck!’ Huw suddenly backed away from the table, a look of alarm on his face.

  She bent down and saw the interior of a cave or tunnel. The walls and low ceiling were glowing with the lights of candles in circles on muddy ground. Around the edges figures were crawling, three it seemed, though there could have been more, moving in a slow, uncertain circle. Every few seconds the screen went dark as the camera was jolted towards the ground.

  As it pulled back briefly, the shapes gained mass and human form. Their heads were half bowed and all were naked, their bodies oiled and shining in the light. One of them was a boyish Face, his head shaved, his limbs pallid, emaciated. He was lurching forward into the lens, spreading his arms out on either side, his mouth dripping dark liquid onto the ground. On the floor was a puddle where there was some paler shape, four small limbs, a head barely distinguishable. Along the wall, what looked like more pale limbs lay in the darkness. All was black for a few moments, then the scene reappeared, at an angle. The camera was still now, placed on the rocks perhaps. To the side, someone was moving out from the wall, a fourth figure. It was taller than the boys, its back to the camera. Down its shoulders long black hair fanned out. One of the boys was crawling forward, head bowed, kneeling at its feet. Then the screen went dark again.

  Catrin felt her heart thudding.

  The piece didn’t feel faked. She had a sense for these things. It felt more like a glimpse of something that had happened long in the past, in some savage, barely human time.

  ‘You think that man is the cult leader?’ Huw was looking closely at her in the dimness.

  ‘Could be, he had long hair like the man Pryce saw in the car.’

  The video had ended. There was just two minutes of blank footage on the file. She pulled the cursor back, rewound to the point where all three naked boys were visible. One of the boys’ faces was averted from the camera. A second had his head bowed, as he gazed down into the puddle at his feet. She pointed at him.

  ‘This boy, he looks like that one in Rhys’s photos, doesn’t he? The one we mistook for Face. He has the same pale skin and dark hair.’

  Huw shrugged, turned away from the screen. ‘In that light it’s difficult to tell.’

  Catrin put her hand on Huw’s shoulder, felt him shudder. He glanced up at her, his eyes wide with an undisguised fear. ‘What do you think it was in the film,’ he said. ‘Some kind of sick BDSM game?’

  ‘I’m not sure. There’s not much to go on, is there? It’s difficult to tell whether those shapes on the floor are human or animal limbs.’

  ‘They’re small, they’d have to be animals.’

  ‘Or children’s? Dug up from somewhere maybe, to use in a ritual.’

  Huw didn’t seem to have the stomach to look again. She rewound, peered at the shapes, but it was too dark, they could have been anything. The closer she looked the more they became abstract disjointed lines. She turned back to the file in the bag, took out the snapshots of the young man they had mistaken for Face, the one she now believed had been one of her abductors.

  The first looked like a school leaver’s portrait in profile. It showed an adolescent with dark, unruly hair, his lips twisted between a smirk and a sneer. The other was a discoloured Polaroid, taken in a pub, arms and pints held by unseen companions framing the shot. In this second picture the man was a couple of years older. He wore fraying jeans, a T-shirt with a blue logo, his eyes half closed, a beatific smile spread over his youthful face.

  At the bottom of the bag she noticed an inner pocket with more papers in. She laid them out on the table. They seemed to be copies of a standard Police National Computer Missing Persons Report. The name on the report was Iolo Stephens, from Fishguard. There was also a coroner’s report on the skeletal remains of a body recently discovered on the coast north of Dinas Head.

  The Iolo Stephens report contained all the usual information collated during the investigation of long-term missing person cases: the name, date of birth, distinguishing marks, GP’s medical records, interviews with relatives, friends, past employers, known associates. The boy had left school without finishing his exams, drifted through part-time jobs in Tenby and other small seaside resorts, been reported missing by his family back in September 1998. None of the names on the report meant anything to her.

  The last papers were a hastily made printout from the Police National Missing Persons Bureau, from the section specialising in cross-matching mispers with unidentified bodies. There were pages from the Pembroke coroner’s report of the previous month on the skeletal remains of a young man discovered by Dyfed-Powys police on Strumble Sands, three miles north of Dinas Head. A blurred photograph showed all the bones laid out like the last stage in an anatomy study on a stainless steel slab. The entry from the pathologist gave no evidence of external injuries prior to submersion in the water, and the coroner had returned a verdict of accidental death.

  Catrin looked from the still of the second boy in the film to the two photographs of the young man, Iolo Stephens. There was no question they were one and the same person. She put her fingers over his clothes and hair, so only the face was visible. She recognised him now as one of the early fans in the pictures over the cabinet in Gethin Pryce’s house.

  She disconnected the chipped green rotary-dial phone from its socket and plugged in the laptop, while Huw looked over the photographs and the two reports.

  ‘The boy in the first report, Iolo Stephens, he’s in those photographs at Pryce’s of the early Face fans,’ she said, putting her fingers over the clothes and hair again.

  Huw held the picture up to the light, a hint of recognition in his tired eyes.

  ‘So it looks like Pryce’s theory about the fans around Face disappearing when that man with long hair came on the scene has some substance.’ Huw picked up the photograph of the skeleton. ‘And the remains found in the Sands, it’s the same boy?’

  ‘I’m not sure,’ she said.

  She tapped in the address of the Dyfed-Powys Police database. After about a minute the force shield with the two red dragons in profile g
radually filled the screen.

  ‘Why not take the usual route to the PNC via Command & Control at the Met?’ Huw asked. ‘Or am I out of date?’

  She shook her head. ‘No, but the local force will often have more on their database than they upload to the PNC and the Police National Missing Persons Bureau.’

  She keyed in the passwords and brought up the files. She put her finger under the case number on the original mispers report for Stephens.

  ‘Can you see any follow-up on the Stephens case?’ Huw asked

  ‘There’s nothing, only the routine six-month reviews by the DS.’

  ‘Any other forces pulled the file?’

  ‘None.’

  The flickering light of the screen hurt Catrin’s eyes and made her feel slightly faint. She stood up, opened the window a crack and breathed deeply.

  She pushed the laptop over to Huw’s side of the table. ‘Here,’ she said. ‘I’ve already opened the databases of all the relevant agencies.’ She brought out her Drum from her bag, quickly rolled a cigarette.

  ‘Run all the relevant cross-checks,’ she said. Huw remained bent over the keyboard as he worked his way through the PNC, the PNMPB and the National Missing Persons Helpline.

  She lit up, drew deeply. ‘Any links made between the Stephens file and the Sands body?’

  ‘None by Dyfed-Powys. No cross-matches on the PNC, the PNMPB or the National Missing Persons Helpline.’

  ‘Either case flagged on Scotland Yard’s Kidnap-Ransom desk, or the Met’s SO7?’

  Huw pulled the keyboard closer and checked the files.

  ‘No, no trace on either.’

  She turned away, blew her smoke towards the crack in the window. ‘Any match between Stephens’s ante-mortem dental records, and those of the Sands body?’

  ‘There weren’t any dentals in the Stephens file. Is that usual?’

  ‘Put it this way, it’s not that unusual.’

  ‘Because the investigating officer can’t be arsed to collect them?’

  ‘Lack of NHS rural dentists more like.’

  She looked round for the ashtray, but couldn’t see it.

  ‘Height, build and age range match?’

  ‘Height’s one-eighty in both cases, pathologist’s age range eighteen to twenty-five on the Strumble Sands body.’

  Huw had stopped tapping for a moment, and Catrin turned her head towards the door. She could hear no sounds yet in the passage outside and no voices filtering up through the floor from the pub.

  She passed the coroner’s report over to Huw’s side of the table. ‘Anything in the Dyfed-Powys database that’s not already in the pathologist’s report on the Sands body?’

  The dark reds and blues of the Dyfed-Powys portal poured out over the room as Huw went back into the local file.

  ‘Nothing.’

  ‘Did the Pembroke coroner run DNA tests?’

  ‘Yes, but we don’t have DNA for Stephens.’

  ‘Did the coroner run diatom tests to see how long the body had been in the water?’

  ‘There wasn’t sufficient organic matter left on the bones to run a diatom.’

  ‘Anything at all to suggest foul play?’

  Huw bent over the report. ‘Nothing at all. No abrasions, no broken bones. No signs of battery, laceration or external injury.’

  She looked down again at the two photographs of the young man, then opened the nets, brought the bedside light onto the table. She stood under the window with the photographs for almost a minute, then passed them back to Huw.

  ‘Look closely at the colour of the boy’s skin. Doesn’t it look slightly jaundiced?’

  Huw looked over her shoulder for a full minute at the photographs. Then he opened the cardboard folder under the lamp, began looking at the photocopies of Stephens’s GP notes.

  ‘There’s nothing unusual with the GP,’ he said after a long pause, ‘just the normal vaccinations, a broken ankle when he was seven. No blood work or other hospital referrals.’

  ‘What about on the Dyfed-Powys file?’

  He bent close over the screen again.

  ‘They’ve scanned one inpatient record for Stephens from Withybush Hospital in Haverfordwest.’

  ‘But they didn’t bother to log it on the PNC or PNMPB?’

  ‘That’s probably because it’s from January 1994, five years before Stephens was reported missing.’

  Catrin reached over to the breakfast tray and tapped her long ash into a saucer.

  ‘What was Stephens admitted for?’

  ‘Acute liver failure.’

  ‘At the age of sixteen?’

  Huw was scrolling back through the notes. ‘Recovery is recorded as complete, there are no follow-up outpatient records.’

  He began to cough, raised a hand up to his mouth. Catrin was about to put the cigarette out, but took a final deep draw.

  ‘Any history of hepatitis, drug use?’

  ‘Nothing flagged here.’

  Huw began to cough again. She stubbed out her cigarette in the saucer. ‘How severe a case of liver failure are we talking about?’

  ‘He was in intensive care for three weeks. Encephalopathy was three out of four on the scale. They were considering moving him down to the Morriston if there was any further deterioration in his condition.’

  ‘Potentially life-threatening, then?’

  ‘The notes show he required high doses of corticosteroids and insulin, catecholamine support and continuous haemofiltration before he recovered.’

  ‘Yet no follow-up treatment?’

  ‘None recorded.’

  ‘Which suggests he was not suffering from hepatitis or any other long-term liver condition. So what we seem to be looking at here is an isolated episode of extreme toxicity.’

  ‘A suicide attempt perhaps, using a liver-toxic agent like paracetamol?’

  Catrin reached back for the Stephens notes.

  ‘I don’t think so.’ She clicked down, stared at one of the pages. ‘Normally with suicide there’s some incidence of depression or mental illness in the GP’s notes, but there’s nothing resembling that – no self-harming profile – in the Stephens file.’

  Huw raised his eyebrows at her. ‘Suicides can be spontaneous though, especially at that age. It’s a vulnerable time.’

  She stood by the window, began slowly to roll another cigarette. Something else had struck her. She looked at him.

  ‘In the grow-sheds, those fly agaric ’shrooms, the strong hallucinogens, you said they were liver-toxic.’

  ‘Right, like almost anything taken in the wrong amounts.’

  She felt the damp air through the window, held her roll-up without lighting it. ‘How long had that kit been there, d’you think?’

  ‘It’s more recent than his death, at least the lights and piping are.’

  ‘There could’ve been previous grows, though.’ She walked round the table and pulled her chair closer to Huw’s. As he scrolled back over the file nothing was flagged.

  ‘There’s no tox report in the hospital notes,’ he said, ‘so looks like the medics didn’t suspect anything like that or weren’t alerted to it.’

  ‘Go back into the PNMPB database,’ she said. She watched Huw’s heavy fingers moving quickly across the keys, the blue light washing over his drawn features.

  ‘See if the system will let you cross-match drug-related deaths, mispers, unidentified bodies, and an age range fifteen to twenty-five – for the maritime park area?’

  ‘Period?’

  ‘Try ’89 to the present.’

  He pushed the screen to the left, so she could see it more clearly. ‘There’s thirty-seven matches in all.’

  Catrin closed her eyes for a moment, the flickering light was making them ache. ‘Now try the same search criteria on other isolated seaside regions, with comparable population figures: North Devon, North Cornwall, Antrim, North-Eastern Scotland and the rest?’

  Huw was already tapping in the searches, scrawling a column of fi
gures on the back of one of the photocopied pages.

  ‘There’s no significant difference,’ he said slowly.

  ‘What if you exclude DRDs, keep the age range, narrow the search to mispers and unidentified bodies?’

  ‘Pembrokeshire’s higher by a factor of about sixty per cent, but on such relatively low numbers that’s not statistically significant. Taking into account the legacy of alternative lifestyles in the area from the Sixties and Seventies it’s probably what one would expect.’

  ‘The overall figure?’

  ‘Thirty-two.’

  ‘How many of those have a connection to the north, the maritime park area?’

  She watched him pull up the postcode chart, then tap in the codes. He looked exhausted, his shoulders slumped against the back of the chair.

  ‘Twenty-nine.’

  ‘But the national park’s the most thinly populated part of the county – what’s the population percentage in relation to the rest of the county?’

  ‘About twenty per cent.’

  She closed her eyes again, took deep breaths, the after-images of the light shivering still over her eyelids.

  ‘How many of those mispers later matched to bodies?’

  ‘Nineteen.’

  She turned towards the wall, her eyes closed. ‘I think we need to take a closer look at those nineteen cases,’ she said finally.

  As Huw downloaded the files there was a low whirring noise. She could hear the faint clatter of glasses downstairs in the bar, then there was silence again.

  Catrin looked at the faces. Her eyes moved slowly from one to the next. There were none she recognised from the photographs in Pryce’s room. But many were poor, overexposed. She ran her fingers over the screen, trying to read the foreshortened lives through the faces. A hatchet-faced youth standing in a muddy field whose thinness bordered on emaciation, a seventeen-year-old farmer’s son from Martletwy, reported missing in June 1998, his body found seven years later lying on rocks near Cat Head. A twenty-year-old girl, a trainee teacher from Laugharne holding a wine glass, her wide blue eyes made owlish by large round spectacles, found floating in the sea off Crincoed Point. Next to her, ringed in a group photograph, a slight, seemingly bemused adolescent in a faded black Motörhead T-shirt standing in a crowded students’ union bar. She’d been reported missing in February 1997 while reading Ancient History at Aberystwyth, her body spotted by a Stena Line employee and hauled out of Fishguard Harbour three years later.